Gaming for Gold

The discovery of gold in the Klondike in the late nineteenth century set off not only a rush of prospectors to the North, but also a scramble by board game companies to capitalize on the gold craze. The image to the right is the game board of “Horsman’s Game of Klondike,” released in 1897 by E. L. Horsman and Maraquita Bangs of New York.

One of many such games produced in this era, Horsman’s promises “a game of surprises and divers [diverse?] dangers and success to the persevering.”

Note that the two primary routes to Dawson City—the Yukon River and the overland (i.e., Chilkoot Pass) route—are both available to players, though the numbering of the spaces begins at “1” at the mouth of the Yukon (perhaps prioritizing that particular corridor?).

You may notice that the makers of the game took a few liberties with—or outright ignored—geographic reality. Despite being a district of the Northwest Territories at the time, the Yukon is misidentified as “British Columbia.” Note also that Juneau appears to be a landlocked city with the ocean nowhere in sight!

Horsman’s and many other Alaska-Yukon-themed board games have been collected and preserved by the University of Alaska Museum of the North in Fairbanks. Stay tuned to this blog…more games will be posted in the coming weeks…

Sourdough!

Susannah Dowds, as part of her research for her dissertation, Alaska Sourdough: Bread Beards and Yeast, is gathering sourdough starters from across the state. If you have a starter and a story, bring both to the 2013 Museums Alaska and Alaska Historical Society Conference and become part of the narrative!

 

Photo credit: Sheldon Museum & Cultural Center

Sourdough starter is easily transported when dehydrated; here are instructions on how to dry your yeast:

1. Feed your starter a few hours beforehand, so that it’s at its peak ripeness.

2. Drop about two tablespoons of the starter onto a sheet of parchment paper or a clean and use a flexible spatula to spread it as thinly as you can all over the sheet.

3. Place the sheet on a cooling rack and set aside until dry. (This could take anywhere from a few hours to a day.)

4. Break the dehydrated starter into pieces, place in a freezer bag and put in a baggie.

If you have any questions, please contact Susanna at stdowds@alaska.edu. Susanna is currently completing a Master’s Degree in Northern Studies at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Denali still great…but 83 feet shorter…

The great Denali, as you may have heard, is eighty-three feet shorter than previously thought. As a result of a federal-state radar mapping project, surveyors now put the mountain’s height at 20,237 feet, still 686 feet higher than Canada’s Mount Logan, the second-tallest peak on the continent.

We’re a little behind the Alaska media in announcing this story, but AHS’s own Katie Ringsmuth was at the Map Collectors conference in Fairbanks earlier this month where Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell made the Denali announcement. Katie snapped this photo, and there’s our scoop on this story!

According to Gary Holton, director of UAF's Alaska Native Language Archive who presented at the conference, what we Alaskans call Mount Foraker in the Koyukon language is called Deenaalee Be'ot (the high one's wife). Another excellent example of why more Alaska Native place names should be included on the map!

Read the Anchorage Daily News story here:

http://www.adn.com/2013/09/11/3070795/new-survey-cuts-mount-mckinley.html

New Online Exhibits – Alaska State Museum

The Alaska State Museum announces two new online exhibits:

“Nicholas Galanin: The State of Being, Displaced”

Nick Galanin, a Sitka-born Tlingit artist, understands that being part Alaska Native and part non-Native means that his world cannot be so clearly defined. Through his different mediums of art, such as video, monotype, prints, masks and paper, Nick expresses himself and the intertwined cultures in which he was raised. The exhibit may be viewed at: museums.alaska.gov/online_exhibits/nick_galanin_2013.html

Galanin’s videos are available at: www.youtube.com/user/ngalanin/videos

“Tommy Joseph: Rainforest Warriors (Tlingit Armor)”

Tommy Joseph is a Tlingit artist who has been carving since the third grade. Amongst his carvings, Tommy has carved a lot of Tlingit armor that is representative of the Battle of 1804 that took place in Sitka. His online exhibit can be viewed at: http://museums.alaska.gov/online_exhibits/tommy_joseph_2013.html

Whittier photographer / historian wins Lange–Taylor Prize

Jen Kinney, a photographer, writer, and historian currently living in Whittier, has won the 2013 Dorothea Lange–Paul Taylor Prize from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. The award is given to encourage collaboration in documentary work in the tradition of acclaimed photographer Dorothea Lange and writer and social scientist Paul Taylor.

Kinney’s entry, “City Under One Roof,” is about Whittier’s shared spaces, especially the Begich Towers where most of the town’s residents live. In this “unlikely crossroads of community and solitude, isolation and claustrophobia,” Kinney investigates “how the structures that people inhabit shape and order their lives; how, in turn, people construct, alter, and destroy spaces; and how these constant renovations to our physical world mirror changes in the stories that we tell ourselves, and how we structure our lives to these stories.”

Kinney graduated in 2012 from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in photography and imaging. She is currently working on a book about Whittier that includes her photographs, edited oral histories, historical essays, and archival photographs.

To view Jen’s images, please visit:

http://jakinney.com/

http://cdsporch.photoshelter.com/gallery/Lange-Taylor-Prize-2013-Jen-Kinney-Images/G0000LvZxBCs869w/C00009taULymel.4(password: WhittierAK)